Livre d'Or

Literal hellfire is too silly to have any emotional resonance for me, let alone be anything that may play a part in any rational thought. However, it seems my brain is capable of coming up with ideas which have some emotional sting (mostly involving loneliness), although again, nothing that manages to reach anywhere rational. Of course, you could imagine the idea of a Cosmic Naughty Step as being silly too; and that gives a suggestion of where it might be coming from.

(Random side note; apparently Pascal didn't think you could will yourself into belief as such - more that if you went through the motions of religion, belief would follow.)

Truth, as a value (intrinsic, rather than instrumental), as a moral or quasi-moral sentiment, is interesting - I don't really have the perspective of being judged. On the one hand, contra Kant, I that think lying to a murderer who's asking you where their intended victim has gone is a good thing to do. On the other hand, it does seem important; to the extent that thinking about promoting socially useful but untrue doctrines makes me realise I'm not a utilitarian. On the other other hand, I often see it (mainly?) in terms of attempt rather than success; truthfulness and honesty rather than being right. On the fourth hand, there's a whole pile of issues to do with meaning (in the semantic sense of the word), that make the whole thing complicated; in particular one of these is speech act theory.

I think, with truth, there's a triangle, with dogmatism in one corner, uncertainty in a second corner, and postmodernism in the third. I find myself close to or on the edge between corners 1 and 2. From this point of view, the thing about CiCCU-style Christianity is that it does at least make definite comprehensible claims; it does avoid the problem of being "not even wrong" from time to time.